


Too Good to Be True

by cosmokyrin



Category: RWBY
Genre: F/F, Mentions of character injury, Minor Spoilers, Post-V8 Prediction, Romance, Written the same week V8E5 was released
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-09
Updated: 2020-12-09
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:20:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27972239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmokyrin/pseuds/cosmokyrin
Summary: Surviving was one thing.  Seeing her father live, having Salem's forces withdraw and then being able to live her life as she wanted -- away from Ironwood's control -- was another. Her luck, she believed, had already played out its best. Would it extend to her confession to Ruby?
Relationships: Penny Polendina/Ruby Rose
Comments: 16
Kudos: 73





	Too Good to Be True

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, thanks for picking this title to read! This is the first work of fanfiction that I've completed and am posting here. I guess Nuts and Dolts inspired me way too much to have me pick up writing after all this time!
> 
> This is a post-V8 prediction of sorts. It focuses more on Penny's internal feelings much more than the plot. Consider it as having very minor spoilers for V8E5.
> 
> Also credits to Avistar123 for beta-reading! <3 <3

Penny realized her feelings all at once.

It wasn't as shocking as anyone would have assumed. At least for her. But she guessed, if it had been any other time than now, maybe she would have been surprised.

But in the siege of Atlas she learned things she could only have ever dreamed of knowing, or experiencing. For most of her life she didn't believe in her humanity, or even, that she could actually be human. In the two nights of war, fate proved her otherwise.

Penny didn't believe in fate, or, she didn't know if she should. In light of her newfound autonomy, she found it an odd concept. She played around with the thought, though. Given how much she struggled against the strings everyone had pulled her with, and rising above those, she found fate a little more as an oppressing force. After some rumination, idly stroking a thumb over her gloved hand, she concluded that she held a distaste for the concept of fate.

After all, they thought she would be as obedient as every one of the soldiers of Atlas, more so than every human in the military. But, fate, perhaps, as ironic as it seemed, gave her the one thing that, taken for granted by everyone else, was the same thing that defined her differently from the rest of them.

Feelings.

When the memories she recalled were those that were special for her, her photographic memory was something she felt so lucky to have. She could remember, or, because she actually recorded everything, _replay_ every scene that made her feel happy, cozy or simply, human. One such memory was when Ruby assured the existence of her soul – when she assured she was just as real as anyone else. She frequently replayed the memory during the months of patrolling the cold streets of Mantle. It kept her warm, and, for some reason, hopeful.

But she wasn't always like this. She was, at most, programmed to respond appropriately to a varied display of human emotions. It was how her script was written, but it was also something that they meant to evolve. Learning about the degrees of human emotion and how they behave under its influence was essential in strategizing. Anger someone well enough, and they can be provoked into blindly attacking. To have the upper hand in combat, to win – that was the goal. Recognition of feelings was supposed to be external and one-sided. She wasn't supposed to go beyond that.

But on that fateful day she met Ruby, the mechanisms of analyzing and synthesizing behavior and emotions turned _to_ her.

_"Take care, friend."_

Friend. The words registered in her systems immediately, pulling out the meaning of the phrase in less than a split-second. Her neural feedback concluded that this was something people say to those they are close with, to special people, _friends_ , and that means, from her strategic viewpoint, this person was not a threat.

And so it would have simply gone that way, but for all her years observing and learning about language, something about them always pulled her strings in another direction.

When she searched for that concept – that secret force behind language, she found the closest word to describe the sudden burst of epiphany that led her to chase the girl with the red cape.

_Desire._

Penny knew it was the moment her programming branched out to write its own script, rushing to life a whole new page beyond what anyone could comprehend, for she herself didn't understand it either.

But like a stack of dominoes, this same desire was what led to the cacophony of events that blazed from one sorrow to another. A multitude of pain and terror she never dreamed of knowing, a deep hole pulling her towards her darkest fears. Dilemmas stacked up on each other, making her, for once, wonder if she regretted wanting to be human.

And yet, here she was, on a new day, back in Amity Arena.

A tattered red cape blew with the wind. Penny gazed and ruminated on its color. Red signaled danger for many, but it also meant something positive. And she knew, fully understanding at that moment, that the color fit perfectly what she felt.

"Ruby?" Penny tentatively called out. Ruby immediately turned, the orange glow of dawn skies painted across her face. A weary but hopeful expression gave way to a soft smile.

"Hey, Penny," Ruby replied affectionately albeit a little quiet, patting the space beside her. Penny obliged.

No words were exchanged between them as they watched the rising sun illuminate the skies they thought they'd never see again. Amity hovered over the remains of the battlefield. What they used to know as Mantle was now a mere crater containing the debris of what was once Atlas. Much farther above it sat the new metropolis of Prometheus, unreachable for the Grimm they know, and, in their best hope, can never be reached by any such threat again. In the end, they went with Ironwood's plan of raising a city high in the sky, but as they promised to themselves, they left no one behind.

Penny looked up again to the sun. As much as she flew over Atlas many times, the sight was breathtaking. To see its light – reminding her of the will that kept her going. She could feel the vastness of the world, almost as if its entirety was before her. As if this was the only moment they could be in. Even if she knew that peace was temporary, her heart swelled from knowing where she was now.

"It's beautiful," Penny said in their silence. "I feel very lucky to be here. To be able to see this." She turned to Ruby, one silver eye looking back at her. "To be alive."

"Me too, Penny."

She searched for something within Ruby's eyes -- some kind of clue. When she rampaged under Watts' control, the voices of her family and friends called out to her, to her own conscience that screamed in the abyss, but only one voice truly awakened her from her slumber. Ruby.

Initially, she didn't understand why it was so, that was, until Salem herself clawed one of Ruby's eyes out. Before the witch could take out the other, Penny found herself in between them, the power of the Winter Maiden bursting inside her a thousand fold. At that moment, all she could remember was the intense desire to protect Ruby. The intense desire to protect someone she held so dearly.

Then Penny finally understood.

_She loved her._

But did Ruby love her, too?

And now, as much as she didn’t want to, as much as she disliked fate, she wondered if she stood in the same place she lived and died in order to end a cycle and make a new one. One that included a new her, a new Ruby. A new world. Should she trust the course it put her to? Did Ruby, after all these years, after all their interactions, their conversations, their secrets and confessions, feel the same captivation as she did?

"Thank you, Ruby," Penny said. Ruby blinked.

"What for?"

"For everything. I..." Penny wrung her hands together. "I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for you."

"What makes you say that?" Ruby sounded a little more alive than earlier.

Penny looked to her hands, then back to Ruby's eyes. "If you didn't befriend me on that day, I might have never become the person I am now."

Ruby blinked again, this time with a little flutter on her eyes. Briefly it darted in another direction, and Penny couldn't tell under the orange light whether Ruby's face flustered a bit. "Oh..."

"When you called me friend, I realized, for the first time, that I can be someone else. Someone more than what they told me I am. Someone that could be... human. Someone... I wanted to be." Penny found her hand in Ruby's, almost thoughtlessly reaching. But being a little more idle, being more instinctive, she appreciated it. "Perhaps you don't see it as much... but you've changed me, Ruby. In many ways than one."

Now Ruby completely turned her face to the sun but her hand gripped tighter, nonetheless. Penny followed her face, searching for her eyes. Her heart sank a little. "Did I... say something wrong?"

"No!" The answer was quick, guilty and enthusiastic. Penny perked at the change of her tone. Ruby's lips curved tentatively between a smile and a line. "I just... I just don't know what to say," Ruby chuckled. "I didn't expect an off-hand comment to come this far. Weird things, huh? Fate... I guess?"

"Fate..." The word escaped her lips mindlessly. As much as she didn't want to trust it, there was at least a beauty to be glanced at what she once thought as cruel. Nodding once, Penny said, "It is... peculiar."

To meet Ruby of all people that day was, statistically, a one in a billion chance. If she met someone else, if they never met that day, would everything have been much different? It could have, but for some reason, it was that one probability that occurred. Even in her most logical computations, she decided to account for fate. But maybe fate just played with her choice, too. She thought, maybe, it was her choice that created the event after all. Her choice to disobey her orders and sneak out in Vale, her choice to run after Ruby, her choice to tell Ruby the truth about her.

And so she decided at that moment to be honest about her own feelings, to acknowledge the truth, not for Ruby, but for herself.

"Ruby, I..." Penny fought the urge to withdraw her hand from Ruby's. Instead, she held to it like a grounding force. "There's something I wanted to tell you for some time now."

"There is...?" Ruby almost croaked. Penny was trying to read her emotion, but the sun was still blinding. What was it? Were Ruby's eyes expectant? Ruby herself didn't notice, but the red-caped girl leaned forward, hesitant, eager.

Penny sighed. She looked downward. She'd gamble on this moment, that fate somehow meant for this to happen. "When you... when Salem... hurt you, I've never felt as scared as I did when I was hacked. But it was also that fear that pushed my powers to something I never thought it could be." Penny looked up; Ruby's eyes were a little wide, and it _was_ expectant. "And do you... know why, Ruby?"

"Why?" Ruby said almost breathlessly.

"Because you're the most special person to me. And I would do everything to protect you. Ruby, _I love you._ "

At the back of her mind, Penny wondered if she wanted to take it back. She said it, finally, _strongly_ , even. But this was her choice. She finally admitted something that she knew was there since the beginning, but too young, too inexperienced to acknowledge. She finally said the culmination of the feelings, the longing and the yearning as she flew above Mantle, watching over it. The hope that one day – in the same city she keeps safe, in the same city her beloved moon illuminates, in the same city enveloped by the northern lights that extended like a bridge to the other side of the world – she'd find her again. And she didn't want to regret it.

Ruby's mouth wordlessly moved before she hung her head. At this, Penny's confidence slowly drained and her gut sank deeper as she waited. For once, she trusted what fate might have put for her. But now, watching Ruby's unreadable face unfold, she wondered if she pushed her graces too far. She had survived the war, seen her father live, broken free from Ironwood's control, forced Salem to withdraw and regained her autonomy, her life, but has her good fate played out its best?

Fear overtook her and she scrambled for words. "I... I'm sorry, Ruby, you don't have to-"

"I love you, too."

Penny stopped. The words were said quickly. Did she hear it right?

"Penny, I love you," Ruby repeated, clearly and slowly. Penny took long to register the words that she almost missed Ruby's flustered but determined expression. When she did, she blinked and gasped. Even when she understood it, she felt it was too good to be true. But Ruby reassured her.

"I love you," Ruby said once more, now smiling as she reached for Penny's face. "I always have. I've always wanted to tell you, during the Vytal Festival, after we sneaked out to watch the fireflies," she said as she scooted closer. She brushed a thumb on Penny's cheek. "But I never got the chance." At that, her expression fell. She buried her face on Penny's shoulder and hugged her tight. "And when I saw you again, alive, I... I've never felt so happy, so relieved, so... thankful." Ruby faced Penny again. "But I was scared more than ever. You're here. And I can lose you again."

Ruby's hands landed on Penny's forearms; her grip was both firm and gentle. "I pushed it back. I pushed it all back thinking, maybe it's for the best. But I was just lying to myself. Somewhere in me, I didn't want to be attached, or to acknowledge these feelings, but whenever you were there, I just wanted to be with you. I wanted to tell you the moment I had the chance, but it didn't come, just as I feared."

Penny caressed Ruby's face, running a hand from her hair down to her cheek. She smiled. It was a smile of relief. Of gratitude. She couldn't put a word on it, and all she knew was it made her soul feel brighter, vibrant, alive. She didn't have tears, but it felt as though they streamed down her face. "And now..." Penny grinned. And now the chance came as they deserved – the worth of all the choices they’ve made. “Ruby, did you know why I wanted to stay at Beacon?”

Ruby grinned, running a hand over Penny’s hair. “Let me guess. For me?”

Before Penny could confirm, she felt laughter rising in her, and soon the both of them delved into mirth with this miracle. At that moment, the weight of the world vanished. The same fate that cruelly tore them apart, that forced them into the worlds they didn't want, was, in its very ironic existence, what brought them together.

As their joyous laughter subsided to giggles, they understood the one last thing to complete the ceremony of confession. Without any words, they reached for the other's face, pulling as gently as permissible, but with ardor barely contained. It was an awkward bump at first, but soon they found each other, sinking as deep as their love. It wasn't an experienced kiss; it was innocent, naivete, imperfect. And it was just the beginning. They would remember this moment for more than a lifetime.

Even if fate pulled them in the direction of fear, of its invisible strings, it gave them the power of choice. To live was a test of commitment. And from where they were now, it will be one choice at a time. Every day, one step forward.

**Author's Note:**

> So that's it! Thank you for taking your time to read this :) I would have wanted to extend the story a bit but I feel like it ended itself there lmao
> 
> I'm mainly an artist, btw, so you can check out https://cosmokyrin.tumblr.com to drown in Nuts and Dolts posts. See you!


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